A trip out of town can ease pressure and be re-invigorating. Yet an overpowering desire to get away from it all – driven by the pressures of everyday life – often indicates a failure to set adequate boundaries.
A strong desire to flee might signal that it is time to think about
• how you are giving too much of yourself, • which people you’d like to say “no” to, and • which projects you’d like to limit in your life.
A strong desire to flee might signal that it is time to determine
• what you need more of in your life, such as rest or enjoyment, • which people you’d like to spend more time with, and • what pursuits you’d like to add to your life.
Consider how to achieve these changes effectively, by
• expressing your choices to limit activities with clarity, tact, and consideration, • taking the initiative to add desired people and pursuits into your life, and • continuing to reassess and respect your own needs, desires, and comfort zone.
By tuning into feelings of irritation early and readjusting the choices you make, you are less likely to get fed up and want to run away from it all. Sometimes, however, a break is just what is needed to get revitalized and to contemplate in leisure the changes you would like to make in your life.
Having a newborn can put a lot of stress on a relationship. Understandably, most of your focus is on the baby rather than on your partner because newborns are totally dependent on attention and care.
You may be exhausted, overwhelmed, and getting hardly any sleep. It’s no surprise that many relationships start to experience difficulty after the birth of the first child.
Relationships tend to do best despite the physical and emotional challenges of parenting when BOTH partners are engaged and try to do the following:
1. Show love and respect to one another,
2. Help and support each other,
3. Willingly do at least half of the overall work rather than focus on making sure that the other person is doing his or her fair share,
4. Be patient with your partner’s irritability due to exhaustion, and above all,
5. Cultivate your sense of wonder, gratitude, and humor.
No matter what, it is important to be able to get support when you need it. The most effective way to ask for help is to make a positive, specific request rather than a demand, command, or complaint. Your request will be most compelling when you show appreciation in your tone of voice and wording. For example,
“I know you’re tired, but I would really appreciate it if you could feed the baby tonight. I’m just exhausted.”
Having perspective helps ease the stress of feeling submerged. Keep in mind the bigger picture, namely,
that challenges are part of life, that parenting is demanding but fleeting and rewarding, and that with a little bit of luck, eventually you get out of life and relationships what you put into them!
And if not, at least you can feel good about having done the best you could!
“I need someone who shows up every day for the time scheduled and completes the assigned tasks. Unfortunately, in this business I can’t afford to be more flexible. Is there a reason you weren’t able to come on time and finish the work assigned?”
“Let me know if you will be able to commit to the following hours….”
OR
“Would you be happier in the type of business that can be more flexible?”
It’s important to ask why the employee is showing certain objectionable behavior. Many factors can cause undesirable behavior, for example, the following possibilities:
1. Problems outside of work 2. Not getting a promotion the employee thought he or she deserved 3. Unclear communication 4. Feeling overlooked on an earlier project 5. Low motivation or capability 6. Not having the right traits for the job
Once you know the reason behind the behavior, you’ll understand better what your next step should be.
If you talk about your business’s needs rather than the employee’s failings, it’s easier for the employee to hear you, as well as for you to find out what lies beneath the undesirable behavior, and even to fire him or her if necessary without hard feelings.
When you’re unhappy, you tend to target those closest to you. When you feel depressed and anxious, it’s easy to conclude that your marriage (or work or the place you live) is undesirable and a failure. The assumption is that “If I were happy in my marriage, I wouldn’t feel so miserable.”
A vicious cycle commences, as unhappiness is terribly contagious. You blame those closest to you for your unhappiness, which causes them to feel defensive. Defensiveness furthers mistrust and misery, making it more difficult to feel loving and happy.
Before wrecking your relationships by blaming those around you, it’s wise to remember that your emotions fluctuate, and are dependent on a large number of factors having nothing to do with your partner. Simply changing your spouse rarely leads to long-term happiness. Moreover, a downcast emotional state rarely motivates a person to make the right changes required for happiness.
What’s needed for improving your happiness is a multifaceted, holistic approach. Research shows that the following key factors are involved in being happy:
1. Eating healthy foods provides the needed vitamins that affect brain chemicals and vitality; those include all the essential amino acids as well as vitamin D, which you can get from sunshine, food, or vitamins. Avoiding excessive sugar, fats, junk, nicotine, and alcohol can have a dramatic effect on happiness levels. People eating high-fat and sugary foods have been shown to be 58 percent more likely to suffer from depression than those who eat a healthy, balanced diet.
2. Exercising frequently increases serotonin, which, at too low a level, has been associated with depression and anxiety. Among other benefits, exercise is key to overcoming a lack of seratonin.
3. Activating positive behavior is one of the principal therapies used for depression. It means putting yourself out there to do the things that are enjoyable for you, even if you don’t feel like it, as well as being optimistic and smiling at others, which is proven to affect one’s state of mind.
4. Seeking inner peace either through meditation, spirituality, or other calming practices has a great affect on one’s happiness.
5. Cultivating good relationships with your partner, family, friends, and community (or having a pet) contributes tremendously to your happiness. Accepting others and feeling accepted, as well as being respectful and loving, are the best ways to enhance your connection with others.
6. Pursuing your passions, whether creative, spiritual, or athletic endeavors, enhances joy and vitality.
7. Meaningful work, particularly contributing to others, if you have time, has been shown to be one of the most life-enhancing activities. There’s nothing like helping a wounded warrior who has lost a limb to practice a new sport for finding connection and joy and forgetting about your own malaise in life.
8. Eliminating negative emotions and thoughts is critical to experiencing purposeful happiness. Once you start implementing the above seven factors toward happiness, it will be easier to eliminate negative emotions such as anger, resentment, and blame. You will also have less time for negative thinking such as perfectionism, black-and-white thinking, and projection – “I’m unhappy, therefore my marriage is terrible.”
In this fast-paced world of impulsive decision-making, many people wreck relationships before working on the multifaceted essentials to meaningful personal happiness.
Of course there are situations when a relationship is in serious trouble, e.g., having a partner who shows no interest in making the relationship work. However, for your own peace of mind, it’s worth the effort to incorporate the many various keys to happiness in your daily life first before making life-changing decisions. You may tap the well to happiness, and thereby change the dynamic of your marriage, because happiness turns out to be contagious too.
Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.
~Mason Cooley
People who procrastinate put off things because they hope to avoid the stress in dealing with them. However, procrastination is really a form of self-sabotage, actually increasing a person’s stress level and making most problems worse.
If you don’t deal with a late bill, the charges go up and your credit rating goes down, creating more stress. If you don’t talk to your partner or child about their behavior toward you, their behavior becomes ingrained and communication becomes more difficult, creating more stress. If you don’t start a work project, the pressure to get it done mounts, and other activities get tainted by stress.
Life is full of surprises and challenges. By facing such challenges head on, we adapt, grow, and learn to manage life without exacerbating the stress. If you stop running from your problems and face them sraight on, starting with the biggest one first, the relief you will feel will be liberating and life altering.
Rather than letting the fear of pain and frustration cause you to avoid life and its challenges, you can examine that fear to make better decisions. Instead of thinking, “Oh no, how can I avoid this miserable problem?” you can ask yourself, “What added pain and frustration will I have to suffer if I put it off?” No one likes undue stress; however, it is much easier to endure when we realize that we are minimizing long-term pain and suffering and maximizing long-term peace of mind.
Making a list of the steps you need to take is a good way to start. Then you just have to take that first step and face a problem head on. That’s usually the hardest part. If you just start the project, the momentum builds and usually takes care of the rest.
Of course there are appropriate times to procrastinate. On some occasions it’s wise to mull problems over for a day or two. Moreover, if a truly exceptional situation comes up, it can be worthwhile to wait until tomorrow and then to stop procrastinating.
